They Didn’t Write All That?

O.K. endulge me one more day, one more shot of Madison (my first grandchild):

That’s Maddie peeking at her Grandma….

Hard to switch gears here, but here goes….

When I was learning to write music I learned by listening to records. That was a good way, and a bad way. I thought that song writers wrote the whole record, not just the song. I thought they wrote everything you heard from the first note of the record to the last note.

I didn’t have a real understanding of what an arranger did, or what a producer did, or the freedom that a lot of musicians have on records.

So, when I wrote a song – I actually wrote a record. All the parts. I heard the strings, the bass, the drums, the tempo, and the style. Take this track – ‘Great Jazz’ it was written just the way you hear it here:

I have learned through the years to be more flexible, and allow for changes to the songs I write, but I’m glad I learned the way I did because it helps me to have an over-all view of the songs and it really helped me when I began producing.